Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Several days ago, this headline appeared on Climate Depot, a climate change denial site run by Republican Alpha-Hack Marc Morano (the guy behind the Swiftboat smear):It links to a post from a blog post re the Oronteus Finaeus Map, which purports to show Antarctica

...thus disproving the theory of man-made global warming. Except that the map, which isn't a particularly accurate portrayal of Antarctica in the 1st place, has long been employed by anti-evolutionists, ancient UFO buffs, and other assorted nut-jobs in support of their various conspiracy theories and hobby-horses. Notably, it turned up in the 1996 NBC program The Mysterious Origins of Man, narrated by none other than Charleton Heston. From Talk Origins:

...probably based on the drawings of Portuguese sailors, and possibly depicting Australia rather than the Antarctic, should get pressed into service in the anti-AGW cause. Unfortunately, not surprising either that Morano should choose to highlight the kind of gibberish that has sprung up around it.

The magnesium guy? He's probably on the list of IPCC reviewers, which means he asked to look at the docs and comment. Richard Courtney did the same thing, and he's just the PR guy for Brit Coal. I'm making the same request next round and will almost certainly be accepted. And I nearly flunked highschool.

He's a lead author on the inventory of carbon emissions. He's not a lead author on any of the assessment reports (eg the TAR or FAR), nor does he appear to have been involved with these in any way, including as a reviewer (please let me know if I'm wrong). Therefore, we can only assume that he has no more insight into the reports than any other interested layman.

Considering the total snake-oil salesman Morono is, I'm surprised anyone even pays any attention to him at all. Even his tone (Wow! Disrespect! Hostility! Incivility!) in this short discussion was remarkably smarmy.